Cherry Adair - T-flac 06 (11 page)

God only knew, he was smart enough…

Derek had spread his wide sleeping bag on a bed of branches. Lily tried not to be jealous. She was tired enough to beg him to share. A thought that wouldn't have crossed her mind unless she was desperate.

Still the idea sent a welcoming heat through her so it served a purpose in some convoluted way. She'd been relatively warm while she'd been on the sled, but her body temperature was lowering the longer she stood around.

She tried to figure out how to get from upright to flat with a small amount of dignity. Her sleeping bag was way over there, strapped to the sled. All she had to do was put one foot in front—

"Snap to it before you keel over, sweetheart," Derek said grimly, not moving from his position.

Right. She really,
really
needed to do that.

Lily looked at him through eyes glazed with exhaustion, then stumbled away from the meager heat of the fire and unstrapped her sleeping bag from the sled. She glanced around for a decent spot to lay it, out of the path of any other mushers coming through. If she didn't do this before she ate she might very well be
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tired enough to lie down in the snow for her nap.

"Over here."

She suddenly noticed the second bed of branches beside him.
No freaking way
. Even exhaustion had its limits. "I don't think so."

"Me or the snow."

"Snow's safer."

"Don't be ridiculous."

"That's too close to you," Lily told him. "Way too close."

"I won't bite," he said, his eyes on her mouth. "At least not very hard."

Lily's heart did that weird flip-flop in her chest. Ridiculous. "I'm presuming," she said as coolly as she could manage while swaying on her feet, "that you're practicing your seduction skills on me because there isn't another female humanoid around for a couple of hundred miles. News flash, Romeo: you're wasting your breath. I've been vaccinated. I'm immune, remember?"

"Are you now?" he asked, his voice silky. He rose and went to the fire, where he poured a mug of steaming, fragrant coffee. He came back to her, his large, booted feet crunching in the snow, and handed her the cup. "Sit down and drink this."

"I don't want—" She met him glare for glare, then shook her head. Why was she arguing? He held the elixir of the gods in his hand, and her legs were about ready to collapse anyway. She sat down on his sleeping bag and reached for the mug, careful not to touch his hand as she did so. And ignored the little thrill of excitement in her tummy as his fingers brushed hers anyway. Not excitement, she assured herself.

Annoyance
.

"If you're immune, you're okay to take coffee from the enemy."

"You're not the enemy…"
Exactly
. She took a scalding sip of coffee.

"That's my girl," he said with approval as she took another sip. "Sometime when you're not falling over exhausted, you'll have to elaborate on that one for me."

She bit her tongue. "I'm not anybody's girl." The heat of the mug warmed her hands even through her gloves. "You're flogging a dead horse.
Again
."

"Drink it," he instructed harshly, standing over her, the light of the fire flickering on his face. "Because you're a widow?"

"Because I—I loved my husband, and he's only been dead six months." She took several more sips of the hot liquid and it burned all the way down her esophagus. Oh yeah. Just the way she liked it. Then Derek spoke again and ruined a perfectly good coffee rush.

"Sean was sick for years before he died. You didn't have a husband. You had a patient."

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She stared up at him, appalled by his callousness. "That's a terrible thing to say." True, but callous.

"It's the truth and we both know it. It was a terrible thing for you to go through."

"Not me. Sean."

"He's the one that got all the attention and sympathy. What about you?"

"I wasn't the one dying."

He gave her an enigmatic look. "Weren't you?"

"My God, Derek. That's low. Even for you."

"
You're
still alive, Lily. When are you going to take something for yourself?"

"I have everything I need. I'm perfectly fine, thank you very much."

"You're going to be a hell of a lot… finer, believe me."

Her heart started pounding erratically in her chest and her mouth went arid. She licked dry lips as she stared up at him. "What does that mean?"

"Think about it," he said softly, his eyes focused on her mouth. "And while you do, let's get you settled for the night before you fall asleep sitting right there." In seconds he'd spread her bag and unzipped it.

"Get your boots off and climb in. Unless you want to share mine with me. We'd both be a lot warme—"

He gave a short bark of laughter. "Jesus, if looks could kill I'd be a smoking ember right about now.

Okay, move onto your own sleeping bag then. Now, where are your dry socks?" His eyes tracked her features and he shook his head. "Never mind, I'll find them."

He strode over to her sled and rummaged around for her duffel bag. He didn't look up from what he was doing, and she stared at his broad back with glassy vision as he pawed through her personal items.

"Outside left pocket," she told him, feeling cranky and out of sorts and…
itchy
, for God's sake. The man would drive a saint to drink.

Lily shifted over the two feet separating the two sleeping bags, and started unlacing her boots. She put up a hand to take the ball of socks from him.

He shook his head and crouched down beside her. "If I were so tired I braided my shoelaces, wouldn't you help me?"

Lily glanced at her gloved hands on her left boot. Instead of untying the laces, she'd twisted them into a rope. She was loopy with exhaustion.

He tucked the clean socks inside his jacket. "Lie down," he said briskly, shoved her useless hands away and untied the laces of her heavy boots himself.

No way was she going to lie do—He solved that little problem by yanking her leg up to remove the boot. Lily fell backward onto the soft, insulated bag. It felt incredibly wonderful to be flat. She closed her eyes and stayed where she was. In a second or two or three, she'd protest that he was removing her shoes as if she were a sleepy two-year-old. Soon. Very soon, she'd tell him just what she thought of his
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caveman tactics. In fact, any minute now, she'd fry him with a scathing comment.

The second he removed her boot, cold air took a searing bite at her clammy foot, making her jerk back her leg. Derek pulled off the sock and wrapped his warm, bare hands around her foot to keep it in place on his rock-hard thigh. For several seconds he massaged her icy toes until warmth seeped back into them. She wasn't sure which felt better—the heat or the foot rub. And for one glorious minute, she forgot all about killing him. He removed one of her socks from beneath his jacket and tugged the warm wool up her foot.

He touched the small knife she had tucked into a pocket inside her boot. "You think there'll be time to whittle out here, or are you planning on using this on me?"

"You never know." At the moment she couldn't imagine moving, let alone whittling anything. As for carving a slice out of him, she'd need a bit of energy first.

"I've never seen a woman who hates to sit still as much as you do."

"Hey, check me out now. I can't seem to take off my own damn shoes."

"I kinda like having you malleable and acquiescent under my hands."

Lily closed her eyes as he removed her other boot. "Opportunist. I'm as limp as a dish rag with exhaustion."

She was confounded by his gentleness and care. Nobody had taken care of her since her mom had died when she was eight. Her father had always been busy with his veterinary practice. And he'd reminded her enough times that she was a big girl and didn't need babying. He'd been right. She was quite capable even then of preparing her own meals, bandaging her own cuts and scrapes and making her own dentist appointments. She'd even called the local volunteer fire department for help when Cinnamon had thrown her and she'd broken her arm.

She certainly didn't need a man to help her put on clean dry socks. But, oh, Lord. His warm hands on her cold foot had a soporific effect and felt so good she decided to give him another ten minutes before she reamed him out.

"Explain how you came to Montana with Sean and bought the ranch." Her own voice sounded distant to her ears as she fought sleep.

He hesitated. "Were you aware that Sean was my foreman in Texas?"

Lily frowned up at him, her pretty eyes glassy with fatigue. This wasn't the time or the place to bring this up. But if not now, when and where? Derek thought with frustration. She'd erected the Wall of China between them long ago. It was either break it down stone by stone, or take a bulldozer and do it fast and dirty.

"You and Sean owned the ranch in Texas together?" Lily asked, voice as hazy as her eyes.

"No. Sean worked for me for a couple of years. When he discovered that his father's spread in Montana was for sale he asked if I'd be interested in buying it." Begged. Bartered. Tried to blackmail.

Lily stared at him, clearly trying to wrap her brain around something that was the complete opposite of
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what she'd been led to believe. Derek knew what Sean had told her: After Sean's father had disowned and disinherited him, he'd gone to Texas and eventually bought a small successful ranch there. When he'd heard that his father's ranch was being sold off by the state, he'd come back home and bought it. Inviting his previous foreman, Derek, to join him.

Sean had been one of the most accomplished liars Derek had ever encountered. And he'd encountered many. Both as an antiterrorist operative and as a rancher. Derek had always prided himself in his ability to size someone up within minutes of meeting him or her, but in Sean Munroe's case he'd been wrong.

Dead wrong. The man had been a pathological liar and, God only knew, charm personified. Sean could run a scam with all the innocence of a choir boy and it wasn't until your wallet was gone that you realized you'd been had.

Sean had wanted wealth. His father had disinherited him, eventually giving the bulk of his estate to cancer research. The ranch hadn't been worked in years and wasn't worth a whole hell of a lot. It had suited Derek's purposes to be in just such an isolated area. He'd made the state an offer and moved his main operation from Texas to Montana.

It hadn't taken long for the blinders to fall from Derek's eyes. But by then it was too late to scrape Sean from his shoes. He'd met Lily.

But if he, a professional bullshit barometer, hadn't figured Munroe out, how in the hell could a woman in love see through the man's lies?

Lily rubbed her forehead. "But he said—"

"Sean said a lot of things that weren't true." God only knew he'd managed to snow Derek for several years. He'd been that good. Christ, he'd been
unbelievably
good. Sean Munroe had had the face of a fallen angel, and could sound so sincere, so absolutely convincing, that even when Derek had known the son of a bitch was lying, he'd been hard-pressed to believe it.

Conning a woman who loved him as passionately as Lily had loved Sean must've been a piece of cake.

Sean had laughed about it. Worse, he'd mocked and taunted Derek with it. And for once in his life Derek had been powerless to control the situation.

It killed him to wonder if Sean had only claimed to love Lily because he'd always known how Derek felt.

And by the time Derek realized just how many lies he'd told and what subterfuge his "friend" was perpetrating on Lily, Sean had been diagnosed with terminal cancer.

"Then how did—"

Derek tipped her face up with a finger under her chin. "We can talk more about this tomorrow. Right now you can't keep your eyes open and I want you alert and listening when we talk. You need to eat before you sleep, though." He brushed his thumb along her jaw. Her skin was cold but heated up under his touch. He dropped his hand.

"I'm not hungry."

"You're a lousy liar." He put a taunt in the words. "You just don't have the energy. No matter. You have to make the effort. How can you beat my ass if you're anorexic?"

She scooched into the bag and pulled it up over her shoulders, zipping it all the way up from the inside,
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and closed her eyes. "Tomorrow."

"You've got to eat something. Can't go to sleep just yet."

Lily drifted. Arrow snuffled as she always did just before she dropped off. Rio yawned, straw rustled. A branch snapped under the heavy weight of snow and made a soft plopping noise. Firelight danced on her eyelids.

She knew she should eat. She had to take care of herself or she'd be no good to her dogs. But damn it, she was comfy. And warm for the first time in hours. Her breath warmed her throat and lower face; just her eyes were visible between her fur hat and the bag. She'd let the dogs rest for a couple of hours, perhaps four, then up the team, grab something to eat and slip out while Derek was sleeping.

A smile curved her mouth as she welcomed the grayness of sleep.

"Oh no, you don't. I slaved over a hot stove to keep this warm for you. Sit up."

"Derek, go away," Lily groaned. "Tol' you, not hungry." Her stomach cramped with hunger at the smell.

God only knew, she'd eat the bowl and the spoon with it if she had one gram of energy left. Unfortunately she didn't.

"Up and open."

Derek hauled her to a sitting position by grabbing the head of the sleeping bag and yanking her upright.

"Bastard," Lily slurred without opening her eyelids, which were now leaded.

"Open."

"I'm n—" She got a spoonful of warm stew shoved into her mouth.